Healing and Religion

Abstract

The etymology of the term “healing” dates back to 900 ce with references pointing to northwestern Europe. Historically, healing is seen to be embedded in religion. The connection between religion and healing, while emphasizing an anthropological approach, considers categories such as (but not limited to): worldviews, religious beliefs, religious and spiritual practices, rituals, deities, and symbols rather than science. Considered holistically, studies on healing depict “healing-as-practice” (framed as praxis: theory and practice integrated) rather than just a phrase, a concept, a cognitive undertaking or even a discipline in and of itself. Positioned in this way, healing is also situated in practices of global institutions, religions, spiritualties, and indigenous communities alike. In doing so, the nuances of healing used as a phrase or concept, as well as the flexibility it has in terms of understanding what matters to humans are illuminated. Healing embraces all dimensions of human life: the physical, psychological, social, and cultural. This helps position the term “healing,” a popular term within biomedicine, health care, and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities, as associated with holism. In considering the holistic nature of healing, one process includes the healing of bones, organs, and tissue suggesting an underlying common order for healing that can be influenced by religious or spiritual rituals. At the other end of the spectrum of processes, individuals experience healing without any improvement in bodily function. Rather, they experience a type of subjective transformation as a result of distinct cultural, religious, or spiritual practices. In between the biological mechanisms of healing and the psychosomatic influences on healing, lies healing-as-praxis where something or someone intervenes in a person’s constellation of body, mind, spirit, and environment intent on stimulating healing or reaching a state of healing. This indicates that healing-as-practice has (at least) three domains; process or activity, intervention, and outcome or accomplishment, and relates to tradition, community, and social environment. Furthermore, healing-as-practice implies salutogenesis, an approach that focuses on the processes that support healing and well-being; while a focus on illness has to do with the configuration of one’s social, psychological, and spiritual condition. Thus, a distinction is made between curing and healing. Healing is concerned with meaning in relation to illness and curing is related to disease, albeit the terms illness and disease may be swapped in which case disease is interpreted as dis-ease—to be read as “being not at ease”—where mind and/or spirit are also involved. Therefore, the relation between healing and religion/spirituality is a natural one.